Chapter 1
After the divorce, my mom set me up again.
He was an engineer. Good-looking, well-off, and out of the country most of the year.
The only catch? He had a son who wasn’t quite… right.
My mom asked if I minded being a stepmom.
I just laughed. A ready-made kid is a lot easier than nine months of pregnancy. Isn’t the government encour aging people to have children anyway?
I’ll take him.
1
Michael’s work was demanding, so our first meeting was at a café beneath his office building.
He was dressed in a pair of light-gray work coveralls, his features sharp and handsome, his smile disarming
y warm.
was floored. I had no idea my mom had access to this caliber of blind date material.
Over coffee, he gave me the rundown of his life. Thirty-five, a six-figure salary as a global support enginee for a heavy machinery company, constantly traveling for overseas assignments.
When we were done, he made it clear he was more than happy with me, but then he brought up the delicate
subject.
‘I’m not sure if your mother mentioned it, but I have a five-year-old son. He’s in kindergarten.”
I nodded.
I get it, teenagers can be rebellious, but I couldn’t wrap my head around how a five-year-old could be “not right.”
Was Michael violent? Did he have some kind of weird fetish?
My eyes scanned him again, from head to toe. His hands were clenched into tight fists, a sign of his nerves. He offered me a devastatingly earnest, almost goofy smile.
He seemed harmless enough.
“Can I ask why you and your ex-wife divorced?”
Michael went quiet for a moment. “We didn’t divorce. I’m a widower. She died from an amniotic fluid embol- ism during childbirth.”
I froze. That was a detail my mom had conveniently left out.
“When my son was born, I was flying all over the world for work. He lived with his maternal grandparents. I brought him home to live with me when he was four, and that’s when he…”
He trailed off, rubbing his hands together awkwardly as he waited for my verdict.
I thought it over, then finally said, “I have a three-year-old daughter. She has to live with me. I don’t know if you’re okay with that.”
